New Triathlete from Indy

Hey out there. I'm pretty new to this sight and just posted my first race report. I figured as a way of intro, I'd tell the story of the first tri for me and my buddy Bri (paraphrased from a summary we sent to our non-tri buddies.) Which was this past weekend. We did the Indy Sprint Triathlon at Eagle Creek Resevoir in Indianapolis...
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Worrying about the weather, and how jumping into Eagle Creek would feel with an air temp of 60 degrees, the new triathletes fell out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5 something AM. The duo had to get to the event site and setup their transition area before the mandatory 7:30 am pre-race meeting.

With the new event sponsor being Steak and Shake (“After race lunch provided by Steak and Shake”) as well as Michelob Ultra (apparently the athletes beer) the competitors tried not to think of double cheeseburgers and cheese fries with the race about to start. Bri and I being in the broad category of Male 18-34, we were in the first wave to hop in the lake at 8:00am – wearing the mandatory swim caps. By the way, each different category had different color caps, and the event organizers had a wonderful sense of humor giving us the purple caps (my wife says "actually, they are lavender".) I’m not sure I was in complete agreement when at the swim start ‘Mini-me’ Bri commented that we needed a picture of us wearing em.

The Swim: 500 meters (please ignore the 2nd, 5th, and all orange buoys (except that one)) – there was a 2 mile swim event after we were done (now they were crazy)

The first thing we noticed when we hopped into the creek at the gun was – we caint see shit. The next thing we noticed was there were a lot of swimmers bunched together and most of them wanted to kick us in the head. Picture a school of piranha feeding. Mental note – go to the side.

After the swim you have to run up the beach and across the parking lot to your bike spot – assigned by race number. Put on helmet and shoes and ‘walk’ the bike out of the transition area before getting on to ride on.

The Bike: 10 miles – out and back.

The first thing we noticed on the bike was Indiana does have hills and they suck. Both competitors were next to identical here, spending 35 minutes on the bike – within 15 seconds of each other.

The Run: 3 miles – out and back.

At this point we are sick of the hill you have to climb out of the transition area. Both were just trying to hang on at this point, and all fear of it being cold were gone as the sun felt hot. We were next to identical here as well pulling down about 9 minute miles.

But we both made it. SAWEET.